TLDR – Left Microsoft back in October – Oracle hired me in November – Ireland gave me permission to work there last week – Monday I’m finally back to work.
Off work for a bit – leading to back to work
October of last year my almost 10-year career at Microsoft unexpectedly ended over a cable; much big sad face. Shortly afterward I interviewed at Oracle in the states while we were there on holiday. Oracle offered me a position in Ireland and the paperwork process started. First Oracle had to process my hiring paperwork, which does not end until the board of directors signs your offer.
After the offer was signed by the board, Oracle engaged KPMG to process the Stamp 1 Irish critical skills works visa paperwork. It also kicked off Oracle to process a background check on me. For the background check, I had to find High school transcript, that was fun. Due to exit paperwork not being processed correctly with Microsoft our Irish visa (Stamp 1) went void. To ensure the quickest stress-free path to a new work visa sponsored by Oracle, KPMG suggested we leave the country for a month. Instead of going home we worked out it would be cheaper to travel around Europe for a month.
Finally last week the new Stamp 1 work visa came in as approved. Following the paperwork being couriered to my house and Oracle HR, Oracle verified it was valid and provided a start date of 4-Feb. Day one is a mandatory introduction. My first day with the new team will be Tuesday. My missions for the first week is to remember everyone’s names and obtain a locker. I want to ride a bike to work. Having a locker and being able to shower and change at work is key to the bike vision. For the first few days, I am going to LUAS and scooter to work.
Getting to work
Left the house about five to seven and rode a scooter to the gallops stop. The sign said 8 minutes for the next train. Not being in the mood to stand there I rode my scooter one stop down to leopards town and waited 3 minutes there. From there it was about 36 minutes to O’Connell GPO where I hopped off the LUAS and hopped back on the scooter. I was at the front door of my building at 0800 telling my story to the front desk gal who provided me with a temp badge and rang up to Sean who let me in and showed me about.
Hanging out at work
Note – Induction said things about blogging and social media policies, but not enough for me to know what is postable or not. Going to default with vague until I’ve had my lawyer, Wes, review the policy
The workday started off with no hardware and some chatting with Sean. At 0900 we walked to another building and found the new hire orientation, where Sean left me. I learned about how amazing Oracle is for a few hours then we took an hour and a half break for lunch. I’m going for no eating during working hours to trim off all of the stress weight from last year, so I went back to where I’ll be working and hung out for a bit. Sean found me some hardware and login credentials while I was training.
Sad face panda was not able to login because of things. The Machine we found had no Ethernet port in it. In order to connect to corp wi-fi, you have to login to wi-fi which you cannot do until you have logged in the first time and reset your password. In order to login the first time you have to be on corp network accessed by cable, don’t have one, or corp wi-fi, can’t get on without a login. I’ll bring in a USB NIC tomorrow, or my real hardware will be there and I should be able to login and start getting things done.
Lunch break was followed by more learning about Oracle, then the benefits and payroll overview. Not being able to login and feeling drained from the induction I called it a day around 1430, jumped on the scooter and rode to the LUAS which took me home. Took me about an hour commute time to work, and the same home from work, not horrible.
It’s been about 30 years, age 12, where I was out of work for more than 1 month, let alone 4 months. Being off of work was ok; it would have been a great deal nicer had we planned and budgeted for it. Either way… It’s good to be back to work.
